Ecuador has re-elected Daniel Noboa as president – a conservative millionaire with a controversial no-holds-barred approach to tackling gang crime.
Mr Noboa’s opponent, leftist lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, has vowed to seek a recount over what she described as “grotesque” electoral fraud.
Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council indicate Mr Noboa received 55.8% of the vote with more than 90% of ballots counted, while Ms Gonzalez earned 44%.
The vote was monitored by international observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States, but neither had released their official reports at the time of writing.
Diana Atamaint, president of the council, said on national television that those results showed an “irreversible trend” in favour of Mr Noboa.
The win gives the 37-year-old president four years to fulfil promises he first made in 2023 – when he won a snap election and secured a 16-month presidency despite having limited political experience.
Image: Daniel Noboa addresses supporters after early returns showed him in the lead in the presidential election run-off. Pic: AP
More than 13 million people were eligible to vote in the South American country, where voting is mandatory.
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Ms Gonzalez’s defeat marks the third consecutive time that the party of Rafael Correa, the country’s most influential president this century, failed to return to the presidency.
She told supporters her campaign “does not recognise the results presented by the “(National Electoral Council),” arguing, among other issues, that pre-election polls showed her ahead of Mr Noboa.
Image: Daniel Noboa addresses the media in Santa Elena, Ecuador, as the electoral council says he has won the election.
Pic: Reuters
Image: Luisa Gonzalez addresses supporters during the presidential election in Quito, Ecuador.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Noboa, heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, is expected to continue applying some of his heavy-handed crimefighting strategies that part of the electorate finds appealing but which have tested the limits of laws and norms of governing.
Ecuador faces a challenge because of the involvement on its soil of two of Mexico’s most notorious and powerful drugs cartels – Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation.
The cartels realised that Ecuador – which is not a cocaine producing country – had excellent ports with speedy routes north by sea to Central and North America.
Mr Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” in January 2024, allowing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to the streets to combat gangs and charge people with terrorism counts for alleged ties to organised crime groups.
In the weeks that followed, Ecuador’s security forces carried out raid after raid, rounding up people they claimed were linked to drug gangs.
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6:03
From February 2024: Ecuador’s cartel crackdown
The country’s prisons filled up with new inmates, and some prisons, notorious for their lack of discipline and control, were taken over by the military, completely changing the dynamic inside and the freedom of the gang leaders to continue their business activities while locked up.
However, during the crackdown there have also been reports of human rights violations, with the security forces having carried out extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests, according to Human Rights Watch.
Image: A supporter of Mr Noboa carries his cardboard cut-out as she celebrates his victory. Pic: Reuters
Image: Supporters of Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa celebrate in Quito, Ecuador. Pic: Reuters
Under Mr Noboa’s watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024.
But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.
Ecuadorian voters were primarily worried about the violence that has transformed the country, starting in 2021.
Both candidates promised tough-on-crime policies, better equipment for law enforcement and international help to fight drug cartels and local criminal groups.
The candidates had advanced to Sunday’s contest after getting the most votes in February’s first-round election.
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
Image: The aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Image: Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
Image: One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Image: Another one of child victims of the attack
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Image: Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Image: Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Image: Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Image: Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
China’s economy performed better than expected in the first quarter of the year – but it reflects a moment in time before the explosive trade war with the US, which has seen the world’s two biggest economies effectively decouple.
Economists had predicted that gross domestic product would grow by about 5.1% in January to March, compared with a year earlier. In the end, it grew 5.4%.
But these impressive figures obscure the very serious challenges China’s economy is facing in the wake of Donald Tump’s trade war – and it is almost certain growth will not remain this strong as the year goes on.
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It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
Image: The remains of Salah Jundia’s home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Image: Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
Image: One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Image: Another one of child victims of the attack
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Image: Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Image: Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Image: Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Image: Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.